Yesterday I posted some quotes from Hughes Oliphant Old’s book, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century. Old’s book is one of the best I have read on the history of baptism during the sixteenth century among Reformed churches. One of the great feats of the book is to show how the Anabaptist threat shaped the way the Reformers thought about baptism. Old shows how initially there were certain ideas among the Reformers that were wrong. However, they did not realize their errors until they ran into the Anabaptists. Being confronted by the encrusted rituals of Rome on one side and the flaming revolution of Anabaptism on the other side forced the Reformers to dig deeper into the Scriptures. Old’s chapter on Anabaptism is an excellent resource. He explains the differences among the Anabaptists themselves and then draws some basic conclusions about their theology. What I think is most important is that Old shows how Anabaptism was not one limb on the Reformation tree, but was a different tree altogether. And while I know you cannot draw a straight line from Anabaptists to modern-day Baptistic thinking there are enough similarities that should give Baptists, compromised Presbyterians, and general evangelicals pause before they claim reformed soteriology, but reject reformed sacramentology.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from Old on the Anabaptists.
“At issue in this question of believers’ baptism was an attempt to found a new church for the spiritually elite.”
“What happened in the social revolution was for Muntzer an exact parallel to the crisis of the conversion experience. It is the same dramatic reversal whether on the objective plane of history or in the subjective experience of the soul. Premillenarianism [as understood by Muntzer] and Anabaptism are logical twins.”
Proto-Anabaptists in Zurich “wanted to move out and form a new church made up of those who were fully committed Christians.”
“One notices that it [baptism] is not a sign of what God will do in the life of the baptized, as Zwingli had understood it, but rather it is a sign of what the baptized has done already and will do in the future. It would appear that for Grebel baptism is not so much an act of God as an act of the one baptized.”
“For the circle of Conrad Grebel, as for Muntzer, believer’s baptism was the one key to the reform of the Church. If only those who gave evidence of a firm and mature faith were baptized, then the church would be free from impurities. Believer’s baptism would be the effective sword used to separate the true Christian from Christendom”
“The Anabaptists found it difficult to believe that Christendom was really Christian. As the Anabaptists saw it, there was only a very small number of real Christians in the world.”
For the Anabaptist, “the first responsibility of truly apostolic preaching was to bring people into the crisis experience.”
“For the Anabaptist, salvation was gained neither by the medieval sacramental system nor by faith, but rather by the conversion experience…baptism of children before they had this crisis experience would tend to prevent the development of the crisis experience.”
“The Anabaptists were, to be sure, not so much rationalists as they were voluntarists.”
The study of Hubmaier’s On the Christian Baptism of Believers “shows most clearly that the opposition to infant baptism arose primarily from an understanding of salvation radically different from that of classical Protestantism.”
“Several things should be apparent from even this brief study of these Anabaptist leaders. Anabaptism was not simply the ‘The Radical Reformation.’ Certainly it was not a radical reformation in the sense that it took the principles of the Protestant Reformation to their logical conclusions. It is far more a reaction against the Protestant Reformation. It is a very different approach to reformation than anything the classical Protestant Reformers had in mind. It was a taking of a different road than the Reformers, not simply going further along the same road.”
As I read Old’s account of Anabaptism one thought kept creeping into my mind: We are all Anabaptists. Even in Presbyterian circles, the themes of crisis conversion experiences for all including children, wanting a pure church full of pure Christians, rejection of anything like Christendom, and a voluntary approach to the Christian faith are dominant. The question Old’s book forces us to ask is “How Reformed are we really?” The answer would probably come as a surprise to a lot of us who believe that we walk in the footsteps of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox.<>оптимизация овкак дать рекламу на гугле
The title of scholar in the church is not easily come by. It requires years and years of gathering information, digesting that information, and then dispensing it so God’s people can benefit from it . That is why Hughes Oliphant Old is such a treasure to the church, but especially the reformed church. He is a scholar of the highest caliber and has done his work in an area that for years was ignored by the church, liturgical worship. I do not know of any author who has written so many helpful works on reformed worship. He has written some very practical works, such as Leading in Prayerwhere he gives example after example of prayers he wrote for various parts of worship. He has written a popular, but learned book on reformed worship that traces the different facets of worship to their biblical origins and through their historical development. He has written a seven volume set on the history of the reading and preaching of God’s Word in worship. Finally, he has written numerous academic works on various aspects of worship, such as, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century.
Whenever I read a book that influences the way I think and live I like to introduce people to it, like introducing them to a new friend. So without further delay I would like to introduce you to the last book I mentioned above. Very few books have clarified my thinking on an issue like this one. In The Shaping of the Baptismal Rite Hughes Old traces the reformers thinking on baptism by looking at how they changed the baptismal rites and liturgies from the Middle Ages, as well as how those rites and liturgies changed throughout the years of the Reformation itself, especially as the Reformers interacted with the Anabaptists. The book is a wonderful combination of history, theology, liturgy, and Bible. There are so many great quotes in the book. One of Old’s strengths is clearing the mud away from an issue and helping the reader see exactly what is at stake and why a certain practice developed the way it did. Today I would like to pull out a few quotes,which show how the Reformers viewed baptism. Tomorrow I will post some quotes from the Anabaptist perspective to show the contrast.
“The early Reformed theologians were all in agreement that even before the children of believers made a confession of faith, even before they were old enough to make a decision, the Holy Spirit was at work within them applying the benefits of redemption in Christ. As Oecolampadius puts it, ‘Christ washed us from our sins by his blood and in this grace our children also participate.'”
Old spends a lot of time on Oecolampadius who seems to have influenced the Reformers quite a bit. I had heard his name, but was not familiar with his theology or contribution to the Reformation until I read this book.
“At the very heart of the Protestant Reformation was the revival of Augustinian theology with its strong emphasis on the primacy of grace. The Reformers believed that God took the initiative for humankind’s salvation. In the light of such a strong doctrine of grace the baptism of infants was quite understandable. In fact, the baptism of infants demonstrated very powerfully that our salvation rests not on any knowledge or work or experience or decision of our own, but entirely on the grace of God.”
“Baptism is a divine action because of the divine institution of the sacrament, the divine promises behind the sacrament, and the divine empowering of the ministry.
“Another matter which should be equally clear from this study is that the position of the Reformers in regard to infant baptism was an integral part of their whole theology.”
“Covenant theology is in fact the sacramental theology of the Reformed Churches.”
The two quotes above make me wonder whether reformed soteriology can be maintained where there is a loss of reformed sacramentology? Can a reformed view of God’s grace and sovereignty in salvation be kept if there is a low or wrong view of the sacraments?
“The confession of the daily sins of the already baptized Christian, the forgiveness of these sins, growth in grace, the spiritual gifts of understanding and enlightenment, the daily increase in faith, hope, and love, and the sanctifying of the Christian life are understood as the fruit of baptism. While baptism stands at the beginning of the Christian life, its fruit is born throughout the whole of the Christian life. The earliest Reformed theologians saw in baptism a sign not of a one-time-only repentance and cleansing of sin, but rather as a sign of a continual cleansing of sin.
“The Reformers came to the conclusion that the central sacramental action [in baptism] was washing, not a dramatization of the death and resurrection of Jesus in and out of a grave of water. “
In the quote above, Old is explaining why some Reformers used immersion, but it never became the dominant mode of baptism.
“Reformed Churches should not in their liturgical practice give ground to a separation of the baptism with water and the baptism of the Spirit.
“The final, and perhaps the paramount, goal of this reshaping of the rite of baptism was the concern that this sacrament should be clearly a sacrament of grace.”
“The Reformers continued to baptize the children of Christians because the practice was consistent with the revelation of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.”
In the quote below C.S. Lewis is commenting on this phrase from the General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer, “But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders.” At my church, we say this confession, but replace “offenders” with “sinners.” The quote is one of the best I have ever read on how to confess our sins and the results of confession. Almost every line, especially of the last paragraph, is worth your careful time.
“It is essential [when confessing our sins] to use the plain, simple, old-fashioned words that you would use about anyone else. I mean words like theft, or fornication, or hatred, instead of ‘I did not mean to be dishonest’ or ‘I was only a boy then’ or ‘I lost my temper. I think that this steady facing of what one does know and bringing it before God, without excuses, and seriously asking for Forgiveness and Grace, and resolving as far as in one lies to do better, is the only way in which we can ever begin to know the fatal thing which is always there, and preventing us from becoming perfectly just to our wife or husband, or being a better employer or employee. If this process is gone through, I do not doubt that most of us will come to understand and to share these old words like ‘contrite,’miserable’ and intolerable.’
Does that sound very gloomy? Does Christianity encourage morbid introspection? The alternative is much more morbid. Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others. It is healthier to think of one’s own. It is the reverse of morbid. It is not even, in the long run, very gloomy. A serious attempt to repent and to really know one’s own sin is in the long run a lightening and relieving process. Of course, there is bound to be a first dismay and often terror and later great pain, yet that is much less in the long run than the anguish of a mass of unrepented and unexamined sins, lurking in the background of our minds. It is the difference between the pain of a tooth about which you should go to the dentist, and the simple straight-forward pain which you know is getting less and less every moment when you have had the tooth out.”<>статистика поисковых запросов google adwords
“On this day in 1907,” writes George Grant, “the entire nation of the Netherlands celebrated the seventieth birthday of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). A national proclamation recognized that “the history of the Netherlands, in Church, in State, in Society, in Press, in School, and in the Sciences the last forty years, cannot be written without the mention of his name on almost every page, for during this period the biography of Dr. Kuyper is to a considerable extent the history of the Netherlands.”
To celebrate the birthday of this titanic figure in history, we, Kuyperian Commentators, would like to tell you briefly what we have learned from this giant of history who called us to see the Lordship of Jesus over all things.
Kuyper turned my world upside down! Not only did he engage every sphere of life with a joyful passion, but he provided the intellectual tools to develop a compelling narrative of the Christian Gospel. —Uri Brito, Founder of Kuyperian Commentary.
Kuyper was a man who refused to abandon God’s covenantal blessings in any area of life. We are the heirs of this Kuyperian vision of incarnational theology. That by Christ’s death salvation has come to all men, giving us dominion over death, and all creation has been made new. This is the Gospel. May we live as Kuyper describes here: ” instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.” — Steve Macias, Kuyperian Commentary Contributor
“The spheres of the world may each have an earthly head, but those heads are all subject to the one sovereign, the Lord Jesus Christ.” — Luke Andrew Welch, Contributor
Kuyper made me more conscious of my tendency to abstract spiritual matters, instead of applying them. A common problem, I know, but Kuyper was the kick in the pants that this guy needed. — Joffre Swait, Contributor
Abraham Kuyper’s life drives me to dream bigger than I feel I ought, and then take one step toward that goal, even if it’s a small one. And then another. And then another. He was a living, breathing, long-suffering, succeeding example of Calvinism at work: an unswerving faith in God’s good plan and an unrelenting struggle to take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ. —Marc Hays, Contributor
Some of my favorite Kuyper quotes and paraphrases:
“Never forget that all state relief for the poor is a blot on the honor of your savior. The fact that the government needs a safety net to catch those who would slip between the cracks of our economic system is evidence that I have failed t…o do God’s work. The government cannot take the place of Christian charity. A loving embrace isn’t given with food stamps. The care of a community isn’t provided with government housing. The face of our Creator can’t be seen on a welfare voucher. What the poor need is not another government program; what they need is for Christians like me to honor our savior.” ~ Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty
“A Christian culture is established through the education of a Christian populace. You cannot teach mathematics apart from God because math implies order, and God is the creator of order.”
“In the midst of corruptions, your duty as an equipped disciple of Christ is to always seek to uphold that which is honorable, that which is lovely and that which is of good report among mankind.”
“Kuyper’s desire for the Netherlands was that the nation would revive and persevere in its Calvinistic heritage with its doctrine of limited government that respects the autonomy of all spheres of authority and thereby guarantees the freedom of its citizens. ” ~ James McGoldrick b
— Aaron W Eley, editor and contributor
What has the work of the Holy Spirit through Abraham Kuyper meant in your life?
I don’t usually write about personal pet peeves, but recently one of mine got triggered, and I’m inspired to write about it, so . . . there.
I’m from the neck of the ecclesiastical woods known as “conservative” and “Reformed.” We’re known for small churches that keep to the old paths. I love the old paths; I can’t say I’m crazy about the smallness – I certainly don’t regard it as a virtue – but it depends on why we’re small. Which brings me to my pet peeve.
I hear all the time from leaders of small churches that are struggling in various ways: “Well, we don’t need to concern ourselves with results or numbers; we just need to be faithful doing what God has told us to do, and leave the outcomes to Him.”
This sounds really good. It has a nice pure ring to it. Do your duty. Be faithful at it. Let God be God. I’m down with all of that.
But one thing I almost never hear in conjunction with this is the possibility – just the possibility, mind you – that we’re doing all the right stuff, but doing it really badly. We’re preaching the Word every Sunday. That’s a good thing, but what if our preaching is just plain boring? We’re maintaining tried-and-true traditions in worship, but what if our liturgy is desultory or plodding? What if the whole atmosphere of our worship is stale, yea, even funereal? We’re not out there “peddling” the gospel with gimmicks and glamor, but what if our outreach (and our inreach, for that matter) is dull, unimaginative, uninspired, and pretty darn pessimistic (not that we expect bad things to happen; we just don’t expect much of anything to happen)? We’re Christ-centered, but what if we talk about Christ in a way that leaves Him apparently disconnected not only from the everyday life of the guy who walks in off the street, but even from the lives of most of the people nodding (take it as you will) in the pew?
I’ve sat through “faithful” Reformed sermons that were simply horrible; you didn’t have to be a communications major to figure it out. I’ve listened to sermons full of true sayings about God and the gospel that were so badly constructed, so hard to follow, so freighted with in-house jargon, so gloomy, so emotionally manipulative, so interminable, and/ or so out of touch with the real world, that all I wanted was to go stretch my legs – and I’m a pastor, for crying out loud. I’m supposed to like sermons.
Don’t even get me started on the stuff that happens before and after the sermon. I’ve been trotted at breakneck pace through liturgies without a moment to get my emotional bearings. I’ve puzzled my way through liturgies without any discernible theme or logical order. I’ve sat through good liturgies led by people who, to all appearances, couldn’t wait for it to be over. I’ve heard prayers that droned on for twenty minutes, followed by sharp admonitions about failure to stay focused. I’ve been subjected to song selections and congregational singing that would soothe the dead. It’s all “faithful.” It’s all doing our duty. It’s all – in principle – good stuff. And I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
Then there’s the whole outward face of the church. We small conservative Reformed folk aren’t known for caring about reaching the lost – if God wants them to come, they’ll come; and if He’s really working in their hearts, they’ll love bad sermons and boring worship as much as we do. (I exaggerate mildly for effect.) Amazingly, this is sometimes true. People do come to worship, and they do sometimes stay. I wonder, though: Why are we so bad at taking the gospel out to where everyday life happens? Why doesn’t our message seem to “connect” outside the walls of the church? Why don’t we work harder at meeting people where they actually live, talking about questions they’re actually asking, using media to which they can actually relate? Why do we think preaching the Word and administering the sacraments inside the four walls of the church is where all the action is, and fail to develop anything approximating excellence in taking the Word out into the world? What’s with all these drab, outdated websites (if we have them at all); church leaders who are social media illiterate; and “outreach” events that consist of handing out church postcards door to door? Are we trying to be ineffective? Worse, are we self-satisfied because, after all, we’re doing our duty behind closed doors every Sunday? Really?
There’s no excuse for doing good things badly. There’s no excuse for poor preaching, deadness in worship, or outreach literature that looks like it was printed twenty years ago. “At Iconium,” writes Luke, the apostles “spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed” (Acts 14:1). This isn’t a denial of God’s sovereignty; it’s a simple statement of human responsibility. Preach like Jesus really is the Logos and communication matters. Worship in a way that’s well thought-out, engaging, lively, and participatory. Act like you expect the gospel to do something, in worship and outside the walls of the church. Cultivate good ideas, stuff that will grab people’s attention. Tell great stories that lead naturally to the Great Story. Be creative: think about how to relate the gospel to the real lives of real people out in the real world who have never heard the term “effectual calling.” Speak in such a way, inside and outside the church, that people believe. Who knows? Maybe God will start to fill our small churches, and not only we but also thousands of others will have great cause to glorify His name.
Jupiter – someone who won’t expedite your prayers.
A friend wrote me a question, and I think the answer might be beneficial to many of us.
Does praying a lot make God more likely to act?
I think the answer to the quantity question raised by “you have not because you ask not,” is that God is not impressed with quantity for the sake of quantity – but that he looks for faithfulness that happens to express itself in many prayers. It is found in the faithfulness to ask about everything that you need. You will either be a person who goes to God, or a person who goes elsewhere with your needs and complaints and desires.
LET’S SEE WHAT JAMES ACTUALLY HAS IN MIND
When James says “you ask not,” he isn’t saying that they are not ever trying to get any needs met by anyone – I believe he is indicting them for asking elsewhere. He indicts them (in 1.8, and 4.8) for “double-mindedness.” Which is a term for idolatry. It is spiritual two-timing. We know this because James 4.8 is referring to a pair of images in Psalm 24.
Will be overseen and preferably led by the qualified, male elders in the church. Three important words: qualified, male, and overseen. These elders should regularly study God’s Word and read articles and books so they can help lead a faithful music ministry.
Will make it a priority to hire a full or part-time music pastor, who could shepherd the church through music and song. This man will be trained theologically, pastorally, and musically. My point is that if a church has the ability to hire more than one pastoral staff member this position should be at the top of the list.
Will seek to be faithful to God’s Word in content and form. One key to this is numbers 1 & 2.
Will sing God’s Word, especially the Psalms. And will constantly be searching for more of God’s Word set to music. We are grateful for hymns. But hymns are not God’s Word.
Will study at the feet of God’s people from the past, seeking to use tradition wisely.
Will not be afraid of contemporary songs or forms, but will use them wisely to convey God’s Word.
Will highlight the voice of the congregation. This means most songs, after they are learned, will be accessible to most of God’s people. It means there should be regular singing without the aid of instruments. It means instruments should support the people’s voices not overwhelm them.
Will sing songs that have a variety of tempos, moods, lengths, and themes.
Will express this variety using the God-given resources in the congregation.
Will be grateful for all they have, but will seek to use all they have to push on to greater Biblical maturity.
There are two temptations that nip at our heels as we pursue reformation in worship. The first is to believe that older is automatically better. This group clings to the past like it is a magic charm. To them it is a window to better days when the church was “more pure.” There is no maturing in the church for this group. For this group, worship music is largely culturally defined, but the culture is an older one. The second temptation is to assume that newer is automatically better. The culture has moved on from “Holy, Holy, Holy” and if the church is to reach the culture she must move on as well. There is very little to learn from the early church for this group. For this group, worship music is to a large degree culturally defined, but the culture is the newest one. Let’s be clear, while the first error does exist, it is the second error which is the great temptation of our age. We must move on. We must be relevant. The great sin of our age is to look old.
We should aim to avoid both these errors. As we pursue reformation in church music here are some things to remember.
We should be grateful for what we have. We live in an age of complainers. We whine about everything, including church music. Yes, there is always room for improvement. Yes, we all cringe at certain songs. Yes, it would be nice if we had the Psalms that were not paraphrased. Yes, it would be nice if we had better contemporary music. But God has been good to us. We have a great musical heritage from Ambrose to Luther to Wesley. We have more and more Psalms being set to music every year. Growth comes from gratitude not from grumbling.
Any reformation in church music must be built on the foundations of love for Christ and love for his people. If we seek reformation because we want to be “traditional” or because we want to be “relevant” or because we want to be “exciting” we are going to make fundamental mistakes. Love for Christ and love for the Church form the center. Without love our songs are empty and vain.
Musical growth is dictated by God’s Word not by our current culture or a past culture. That means our primary means of evaluating our singing will be the Bible.
We should want to thoroughly ingest the older songs and the older ways of singing. These men are our fathers in the faith. We should sit at their feet before we seek to stand on their shoulders. This does not mean we will like all their songs or methods. But it does mean that each church should seek to live within the stream of Christian tradition. No church should sing only new hymns and choruses and completely reject the older tradition. This only shows arrogance.
We should seek out new, theologically sound music to introduce to the congregation. No church should only sing older stuff. I do think a lot of newer stuff is weak, if not heretical, but not all of it is. There are God-honoring songs being written. We should not be afraid of incorporating these into our local church music.
We should be cautious in accepting worship music advice or songs from theologically inept musicians, whether they are on a church staff or in the pew. Here is why a lot of contemporary worship music is weak: worship music in the modern church has ceased to be overseen by the elders of the local church. I am not saying elders must do everything. But they must oversee it all. Music is a teaching ministry. If the church is to have theologically robust songs they must have theologically robust men writing them and evaluating them. The elders are the guardians of God’s Word. Yet for some reason they leave one of the most potent parts of worship up to other men (or women) who are not fit. Here is what Titus 1:9 says an elder must do. “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” Too many worship leaders and those who write church music do not fit this description. Also many elders do not read and study enough to know what God requires of a church’s music ministry.
Each church can and should have its own local sound that uses local talents and resources, but still functions within the tradition of the broader, historic church. If you have a piano player, then don’t grumble because you don’t have drums or guitar. If you have a guitar player, use him. Two churches separated by thousands of miles should sing songs that have similar content and doctrine. This comes from faithfulness to God’s Word. But these same two churches may sound very different.
This does not mean sound is irrelevant. Some sounds are inappropriate for worship. Some tunes do not match the words they are being sung to. Some types of music drown out the voice of the people. Or they are designed to create false emotional responses. Or they are designed to highlight the musician instead of the people. Or they are associated too closely with worldliness. The musical sounds in our churches will vary, but that does not mean any sound is acceptable for corporate worship.
Please note – I have amended this essay to fix a conflation of passages, a mistake I made in its original publicationa.
Jacob wrestles with Jesus at the gate of the house of God, and he hangs on unceasingly for he sake of goal of the prize of the blessing from his wrestling partner. Jacob vows and follows through: I will not let you go unless you bless me. And after Jacob wins, the defeated Jesus hands over the goods – the blessing Jacob sought. And yet, there is something Jesus would not give him. Jacob asked for his name, which Jesus had not given out yet. Jesus refused. And he also wounded Jacob with a simple touch. We know that Jesus let Jacob win. But within the limits Jesus set, Jacob did win after a long, hard battle.
Jesus tells us to pray this way, like a persistent Jacob – or in Jesus’ parables in Luke – as a persistent widow, and as friend willing to annoy his friend in the middle of the night. We are to knock, as the widow would at the judge’s door. Or we are to pursue our friend in the middle of the night, when he is most likely to relent for the sake of the annoyance. The widow’s great weapon for defeating that judge is, indeed, “persistence.” The friend’s effectiveness is in his annoyance! And all this with a wicked judge, and a bothered, groggy friend. God is not evil or tired, so even better for our labor of persistent annoyance. God is not wicked that he should ignore us, nor is he short fused or sleepy that we should annoy him. But he says the action of prayer will work closely enough to make these analogies our guide. Bother him like he is failing to give you justice, and use annoying repetitiveness as your weapon. He will condescend to be limited, and at some point we will fill up the measure he has set before him, and he will arise and get to work for our benefit.
Of course remember, he NEVER gives out what he doesn’t want to give out, or what we ask for before it is time to get it. So you can’t actually force God to do what you want. But he will let you badger him into doing what he already wants to do. He is just waiting for your voice to rise persistently. He wants a wrestler out of you.
He may also wound you in the process. He wounds to show what power he will use to bless you. He wounds you to remind you that you are not the source of the blessing that he will bring. He wounds to mark you with a persistent reminder of the good God who stooped to the willingness to play a game of uncle, and who let you get your knee between his shoulders before he said “you win.”
Jacob wasn’t stronger than Jesus. He was just more persistent than the limit Jesus set beforehand. He was doing what Jesus wanted him to do.
When man begs at the gate of the friend in the middle of the night, he is doing what Jesus wants him to do.
When the old woman persists in annoying the judge, she is begging and badgering for justice the way Jesus wants her to.
What Jesus will not give us is what he himself does not wish to give us. He will do what he wants to do.
Persistence, repetition, patience, and asking according to the will of God. This is what he wants us to do.
One last note – Common to Jacob and the story of the friend, the wrestling with God is at night. This is a natural time to pray, and many pray when they wake in the mid-night. Jesus’ disciples could not stay awake while he prayed mid-night. But this is also meaningful to our struggles. Struggles always feel like night time, and so we are reminded not to sleep through our troubles, but to see the trouble, the night time as a signal that the friend is in the right situation to be annoyed into action. Instead of thinking, God will do nothing – think, this is exactly when God wants me to bother him into acting. Into doing.
And after we persist, he will let himself be beaten into action, but he will arise to prove himself powerful (and often to prove us weak), and he will act in a way that his strength is displayed.
It isn’t magic we can wield, but it is a prescribed formula we can trust. It is not a formula we can time to know when we will flip the switch. And if we ask for what he does not want, he will say no. But we must learn that often we have not because we wrestle not.
Thanks to Nathan N., my faithful friend for pointing his Nathanic finger and saying “You are the man…who has mixed up two similar passages.” Accordingly, I repent. (back)
Thanks to Nathan N., my faithful friend for pointing his Nathanic finger and saying “You are the man…who has mixed up two similar passages.” Accordingly, I repent.
One of the Apostle Paul’s most famous descriptions of the church involves an individual human body:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27, ESV)
One could easily think that Paul is arguing from the premise that every human person is a unified body. In a biological sense that seems self-evident. But the Bible can speak of people as driven or controlled by various body parts. Paul must be arguing here from the ideal human person–the one who has matured. Paul himself is a large part of the Scriptural witness that affirms that human beings are often bodies in which the parts are at war with one another. Thus:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. (Romans 6:12-19, ESV)
Also:
So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I pummel my body and make it a slave, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:26-27, ESV)
Likewise, James compares controlling one’s speech as “taming the tongue” and further compares such discipline to that of domesticating wild animals (James 3). Notably, James calls such rule or dominion over one’s tongue a form of wisdom, reminding us of Lady Wisdom’s declaration “by me kings reign” (Proverbs 8.15).
Jesus himself warned of how one part of oneself could mislead the rest:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:29-30, ESV)
So it seems that while the human person should function as a unity, a person can, in a sense, be a cluster of warring members. While this should not be so, it nevertheless is often true.
One way to think of what is going on is to differentiate between the de jure and the de facto–legal terms for what is officially true and what is true in reality. While we owe much to others, we are each, once we reach maturity (viewed as a legal age) de jure owners of ourselves. But are we de facto masters of ourselves? The concept of self-ownership is a foundation, but it must be used to build self-mastery–from de jure to de facto.
Furthering us in this process is one of the purposes and benefits of regular Church worship. To show how this follows from Scripture, we need to get some basic points about the worship system or sacrificial system that was given by God through Moses.
WORSHIP AS TRANSFORMATION
As we follow Paul’s admonition in Romans 6 and master ourselves into a single whole intent on serving God, we can more and more fully respond to Paul’s summons to worship in chapter 12:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1, 2; ESV)
Sacrifices were cut up by the offerer (not the priest, he simply took the pieces and fed them to the fire). All the appropriate parts had to be offered. (Some were also cut off and thrown away, just as Jesus advised. My working assumption for now is that, in the New Covenant, we are liberated from sin to an extent that we can offer all our parts. Jesus was using an analogy for struggling with sin from the Old Covenant sacrifices but didn’t wanta literal application to our body parts).
I may be wrong, but I think many Evangelicals believe that the fire on the altar that consumed the sacrifices represents God’s fiery wrath on sinners. This is a mistake. The fire on God’s altar represents God himself and his glory and presence. It is true that unrepentant, unforgiven sinners find God’s presence to be torment (thus the imagery from Revelation 14.9-11). But that makes no sense for sacrificial animals that have been washed and had the unclean parts cut away. The sacrificial meat, remember, is treated as holy, not as defiled.
In the sacrificial system established under Moses, the animal takes the curse of sin for the offerer when the offerer kills it. The blood is carried near to God’s presence on the altar to display the evidence that death has taken place and there is no further judgment to come. Then the animal goes up into the altar where it is turned to smoke and goes further up into heaven–into God’s glory cloud like the cloud that came down on Mt. Sinai or that later filled the Tabernacle and still later entered Solomon’s Temple. The cloud that Ezekiel saw and, in a vision, penetrated to see God’s throne carried by Levitical angels.
This, after all, is exactly what happened to Jesus. He is killed. His blood pours out on the ground for all to see. Then he is transformed by the Spirit. He is raised from the dead and then ascends to His Father in a cloud.
One more piece of evidence that burning the sacrifice represents transformation and elevation or ascension, is that the items put in the fire with the animal (incense, cake of bread) is also what is kept inside the Holy Place. The altar was set up outside the doorway of the Tabernacle. The Holy place was the first room on the other side of the entrance where only priests could pass through. So putting the animal on the altar seems to correspond with a priest approaching God’s presence in the Tabernacle. The second room where no one could go but the high priest represented the highest heavens and there were two golden statues of angels representing the Guards in God’s own throne room. So it is no surprise that, when Jesus was taken up in a cloud, two men in white were seen as well.
And by going through this process, Jesus became to us, among other things, “wisdom from God” (First Corinthians 1.30). He was made our Greater Solomon.
Before killing the animal and then putting it through this transformation, the offerer was to place his hands on the animal to appoint it as his representative. So the animals death and “resurrection” are supposed to apply to the worshiper. We are supposed to be transformed by God’s presence in worship. Our minds are to be renewed in wisdom and torn away from the folly of the world’s alleged “wisdom.”
SUMMONING EVERY ONE OF US & ALL OF US
Many times in the Bible God’s people are summoned to gather as one before the Lord’s presence. But what is odd is that we also see in the Bible sometimes a person summons all of himself in the same way he would summon a group of people to gather together.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits… (Psalm 103.1b, 2; ESV).
David here summons his soul, and then summons more: “all that is within me.”
When God calls us to worship, he calls us altogether (all-together) to gather as a single whole. Just as we are affirmed as one body with fellow Christians as we listen to God’s word, pray to him, sing psalms and hymns, and eat and drink bread and wine together when we “come together as a church” (First Corinthians 11.18), so we are each taken apart by the word of God (Hebrews 4.12) and put back together as new whole person, glorified by contact with the glory of God.
We are, if you will, disintegrated in worship and then re-integrated better than before. And in that transformation, you learn to rule yourself and everything else better by a true wisdom. You are renewed in your mind.
One final comment. I don’t know that we can reduce this transformation process to understanding new truths or some other intellectual process. While hearing good preaching and learning new things is important, it might not happen every week. Does that mean going to church was a waste of time? I have to say no. Even though church can be “done wrong,” we should expect that meeting with God in a special way has power that affects us even if we don’t learn anything new or feel inspired by some aspect of the service.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
One of the Apostle Paul’s most famous descriptions of the church involves an individual human body:
